Part Seven: Censor clashes with Sun as roundup begins

Stewart Muir, Vancouver Sun03.22.2012

Stewart Muir documents the true, untold story of The Vancouver Sun's stand, in 1942, against government censorship.Roger Watanabe
/ PNG

An April 1942 ad in The Province newspaper for Yamato Silks at 460 Granville Street. Japanese-Canadians were forced to leave their homes and businesses and report to internment camps beginning April 1, 1942...
/ PNG files

1942: A Japanese-Canadian parks his car and hands over keys at Hastings Park, where ‘aliens’ are processed during World War 2 Japanese internment.

An April 24, 1942 newspaper notice ordering Japanese men to report to the RCMP at the Clearing Station of the B.C. Security Commission at 314 Powell Street.
/ Vancouver Sun

Related

In 1942, The Vancouver Sun defied Canada’s wartime censors by publishing shocking allegations that alarmed the city and the nation. What came next resonates to this day. An untold true story from a time of fear, hatred and danger. To read all the instalments in the series, go to vancouversun.com/100years.

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Monday, March 16, 1942 brought more heavy rain and news of an American oil tanker sunk by a Japanese submarine off San Francisco.

Federal press censor Lew Gordon grew sure The Vancouver Sun and its military reporter, Alan Morley, were engaged in a malicious conspiracy with their Derelict Defense series attacking protection measures for the Pacific coast.

“As newspapermen, we realize the propelling motive, in the case of The Sun, was the age-old incentive to toss a red hot morsel to unthinking readers who are ever ready to welcome sensational charges and allegations,” he wrote in a memo to his boss.

When Gordon grew excited, he was more persuasive — a trait that could lead his staff to question their own judgment. On this day, he was excited.

The explosive first article on Friday had not been submitted to censors for approval. This was a breach of regulations and alone gave authorities a strong hand to make an example of the newspaper. Prosecution plans were already in motion.

If there were another eight in the series, those would be dealt with as they came.

A messenger appeared with a galley proof of the third instalment at 9:35 a.m. Monday, leaving little time until the first edition of the afternoon newspaper had to be on the press.

Titled The Ancient Curse, the piece asserted that armies were always one war behind in terms of fighting methods. If British Columbia was to defend itself using the failed methods of Singapore and Hong Kong, which had both fallen to Japan, trouble was clearly ahead.

Gordon went to work, crossing out paragraphs that might upset allies or reveal strategic positions. What remained was somewhat disjointed, but Morley’s key points were mostly intact.

Gordon still disliked the article’s tone, yet remained unwilling to use his full powers of suppression. Instead, he telephoned The Sun’s editorial director asking that it be dropped voluntarily, following up with a written request.

The editors defied Gordon. Part 3 went to press anyway. Soon the edition was on the streets.

From Ottawa, the chief censor telephoned Gordon at 1:30 p.m. with a specific instruction: be strict with any more Morley articles that come in.

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As the censors worked, Takeo Nakano was on the dock at Woodfibre saying goodbye to his wife and daughter before boarding a ferry that would take him down Howe Sound with hundreds of other men of Japanese ancestry now known as enemy aliens.

Soon Nakano could see the lights of Vancouver. After a stop in the city, Nakano, like thousands of others, would be headed east — in his case to an Interior roadbuilding camp.

“We were loaded onto two waiting trucks and taken to the assembly centre at Hastings Park Exhibition Grounds,” Nakano recalled later.

The men’s temporary home was the converted livestock barn, which officials said met the standards for army barracks.

“There our nostrils were immediately offended by a strong stench of cows and horses,” said Nakano. Steam cleaning had made no difference.

The evacuees — betrayed by governments, stripped of their belongings and relegated to a state of helpless panic — were greeted with contempt in their temporary quarters. One tabloid report even attacked the alleged “luxury” of heaters and a few showers being installed.

Within a day of Nakano’s arrival, word got around the city that the annual summer fair held at Hastings Park would have to be cancelled because the temporary settlement was looking more permanent than expected.

The reaction by local non-Japanese residents was anger. The tabloid News Herald chose the word “sorrow” to describe the mood across the city as news of the cancellation “became the liveliest local topic of discussion throughout the evening.”

The Sun, in stories accentuating the humane aspects of evacuation, noted that officials provided special kitchens “owing to the fact that Japanese do not favour boiling as a method of cooking food.”

In the city outside, tempers were aflame and many officials predicted rioting against the Japanese-Canadians — especially if there was an atrocity in Japan involving Canadian prisoners of war.

This was especially worrisome to federal officials because, if word got out of harm to Canadians of Japanese ancestry, retaliation could be predicted against the POWs by their captors.

Seeing the insidious circle of harm, some Japanese accepted evacuation as a necessary evil. Protecting them, even through the grotesque violation of their rights, was one issue that united politicians on both the left and the right.

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The Sun had promised to send Part 4 to the censor the night before publication rather than just before press time. The printer’s proof arrived at 3:40 p.m. Monday.

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